It’s been an ellipses day so far, a day when “…” seems to drop onto the end of every sentence, every decision, every turn in traffic. Maybe it’s because everyone here is tan or overweight or tattooed or some of each and I am none of those, not really. Especially the tattooed: I’m definitely not tattooed.

Or maybe it’s because everywhere is about an hour away.

I have trouble calming down on days like this. Not that there’s anything to be upset about. I just start from where I am – today, awake at 2:30AM and unable to sleep – and the ellipses follow.

“Do you want to shower?”

“…”

“Do you want breakfast?”

“…”

“You found a place for breakfast, didn’t you?”

“…”

“Coffee?”

Well, yes. I obviously need coffee.

I’m not good at making decisions on my best days. I make 3/4 of a decision and then leave it lying there like an open sandwich without the mayo, without the tomato slice, mostly made but without the other slice of bread. You know: the thing that would make it actually a sandwich.

I am excellent at exploring my options. I am very, very good at opening all the doors of all the cupboards and having a look at the contents, cataloging it all mentally, considering a rearrangement of the juice glasses…and then going into another room to…I don’t know, fold the laundry or synch my camera.

The problem is selecting one of the options, deciding that that option is good enough, committing to, “Everything will be fine,” no matter which option I choose. It’s not the red wire or the blue wire and schoolchildren will die. It’s just some wires, all of them one color or another, some long, some short, all wired to the same place, which is, really, just an explosion in the course of a normal day. A normal-course explosion. Like from a chemistry set when you were eight type explosion. Just enough to get you out the door, moving forward type explosion. An anti-intertia explosion, not a SWAT explosion.

I’m good at SWAT explosions, for the record. I’m excellent in an emergency. I’m just not so hot in a non-emergency.

In case you were going to suggest it, reassuring myself that all options are fine is not enough to get me to choose one of them on a day like this. I want more. I want to have had more sleep, to have even more options, to have one of the options stand out like a shooting star in the already well-lit firmament of my morning.

That doesn’t usually happen. Probably because I mostly already have what I want and can get most anything I need. Maybe the unexpected novelty of that has stopped me in my decision-making tracks: everything after having R. and A. is incremental and I don’t know what to do with myself standing on the other side of the sneeze-proof glass facing an array of toppings. I become anxious when confronted by sprinkles.

The option of sitting perfectly still right where I am with my ice cream cone is as viable as taking it on a rollercoaster with me. But maybe the rollercoaster would be more fun. Or a different ride. Or swimming. Maybe swimming.

I would like to take a decision-making class like those classes people take to improve their public speaking. It would start with sleeping for several hours, followed by some breathing, then… Well, I haven’t taken the class, so I don’t know how it ends, do I? No. That’s why I need the class.

In this morning, this day, even having made a decision, ending up somewhere really quite pleasant is not enough. A beach, say. A beach where A. runs into the water and jumps a little and claps for herself and then goes to get a shovel. A beach where – miracle – I am not unbelievably hot the way I always am at beaches. Not the, “Why do people go places to just lie down and be hot anyway?” kind of beach. The other kind. A nice cloudy-day beach. I am there wishing I’d brought my swimsuit, remembered the water bottle instead of the accessories for a different kind of outing entirely, and wondering, “If I could get here now why could I not have gotten here two hours ago?”

Because – sigh – we are not perfect. Some days are ellipses days. Some days we don’t sleep well and can’t make a decision to save our lives. (Except, I could definitely make that decision. It’s these other ones between pancakes and ferris wheels that are impossible.)

But today, that’s just the way how it is. My little cousin used to say that. “Mom, that’s just the way how it is.” It’s OK. There are sand pails in the trunk for digging and we’ll see friends tonight and everything will be fine, ellipses be damned, and let’s just all take a deep breath and calm down and enjoy ourselves.

(Although, really, what is up with going to the beach when it’s hot? That’s insane. Really. There are ferris wheels around here somewhere, for Pete’s sake.)

Hello!

I'm Emma, displaced New Yorker, not-quite-fitting-in San Franciscan, writer, mother of one couldn't-ask-for-better little kid, and wife-like partner. I post where life and peculiarity collide. Come on in: the water's fun!